BLEACHERS BREW EST. MAY 2006

Someone asked me how my blog and newspaper column came to be titled "Bleachers Brew". It's like this, it's an amalgam of sorts of two things: The bleachers area in the stadium/arena where I used to sit when I would watch baseball, football, and basketball games and Miles Davis' great jazz album Bitches Brew. That's how it got culled together. I originally planned on calling it "The View from the Big Chair" that is a nod to Tears For Fear's second album, Songs from the Big Chair. So there.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Old stuff



I was looking at my old advertising portfolio and got a kick to see some stuff I worked on. Back in 1993, I was working for my first ad agency and the Philippine Basketball Association was one of my accounts. I remember the bid for the account so well. Me being the basketball junkie, I was assigned to the account where I got to work with Vintage Productions where I had several classmates. I did several print ads, the first ever PBA Trivia Contest (I came up with the questions and as far as the mechanics go, I wrote them with Butch Maniego who I first met when he was writing for Jingle Magazine), radio commercials that I recorded with Samboy Lim, Allan Caidic, Benjie Paras, Ronnie Magsanoc, and Norman Black to name a few.

The first ever actual print ad I did featured a match up between Swifts and Purefoods. We had Swifts import Ronnie Thompkins and Purefoods' Nelson Asaytono pose for the layout. The resulting picture and ad was awful. Nelson was being an ass during the shoot (he wanted to go home) and was so uncooperative. I couldn't do anything about it and was left with a rather crappy picture. I got a lot of flack for the final product and was put under close scrutiny then. It was rare that a huge account was given to a junior copywriter. I got a severe dressing down from the agency VP and the words he said changed the way I worked forever. I always made sure that after that I was with the production of my work every step of the way.

I later had another shoot with Tony Harris and that was just superb. Years after I left, I was trying to get copies of the stuff that I did from the first radio commercial I ever did as a voice talent (Macintosh computers with Lito Pagayon) and those PBA commercials. Even my stuff for Philippine Airlines. Anyone know someone with access to those materials?

Anyways here are a couple of those ads. The PBA Trivia Contest ad is to the left. The following year, they continued with the contest as it was a huge success. By then I moved to another account -- Philippine Airlines.

Posted by Rick Olivares

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